M.T.A. Board Votes to Ban Political Ads on Subways and Buses

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Commuters during an evening rush this month. A new policy prohibits subway ads for political parties, ballot referendums and any ad that is “political in nature.”CreditCreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted on Wednesday to ban political advertising on New York City subways and buses to avoid the legal challenges it had faced after rejecting some ads with political messages.

The vote followed a lively debate over free speech as dissenting board members and advocacy groups argued that the transit system was a public space that should be a forum for debating political issues. The new policy, which took effect immediately, prohibits ads for political parties or ballot referendums or any ad that is “political in nature.”

The authority still allows commercial advertising, paid messages by the government and some public service announcements. Officials at the agency said the legal challenges over contentious ads had become a distraction.

At the board meeting, Allen P. Cappelli, a board member from Staten Island, said he opposed the new policy because it would prevent members of the public from expressing themselves as they have for a century.

“It is offensive to me as a citizen that the board would even be considering taking such a radical approach to deny the constitutional rights of New Yorkers,” Mr. Cappelli said.

The vote was 9 to 2, with Mr. Cappelli and another board member, Jonathan A. Ballan, opposing the measure. A third member, Robert C. Bickford, voted against it, but he shared one vote with three other members from the Hudson Valley, all of whom supported the ban.

Transit agencies in Chicago and Philadelphia have approved similar measures to ban political ads in recent years. Officials in New York said political messages made up a small part of ad revenues — they brought in about $1 million last year of $138 million in total ad revenues.

The American Freedom Defense Initiative said it planned to challenge the new policy in court. Several legal experts said the authority might have trouble defending it because of how the policy was worded.

The rejected ad showed a man with a scarf across his face and said, “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah. That’s his Jihad. What’s yours?” The group wanted to run the ad last year as part of a campaign intended to parody “My Jihad” ads by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Thomas F. Prendergast, the authority’s chairman, told reporters that the legal challenges had been a distraction for the agency, which is focused on repairing and expanding the aging system.

“We can’t get so deluded and diverted from what our main function is, which is to provide transportation,” Mr. Prendergast said. “When we start to do that, I think the board members get to a point where we want to get back to the basics, without trampling on the First Amendment.”

At the meeting, Christopher Dunn, associate legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the proposal was “small-minded” and “intolerant.”

“The New York City Transit system is our public square,” he said. “It is the place that virtually all of us pass through day in and day out. Because of that, it is a central part of our speech in New York City.”

Rick Kurnit, a First Amendment lawyer and partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, said the wording of the policy still allowed the authority to decide what counted as political speech. One provision, which says an ad cannot express an opinion regarding “disputed economic, political, moral, religious or social issues,” leaves room for subjective determination, Mr. Kurnit said.

“It easily fails on that basis — you can’t have the government decide what are disputed issues,” he said.

The judge who ordered the authority to accept the latest ad, John G. Koeltl, of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, said his decision would not take effect for 30 days while the agency considered whether to appeal. A lawyer for the authority sent him a letter last week saying the ad would not comply under the new policy. If the board approved the policy, the lawyer, Peter Sistrom, said in the letter on Friday, the authority planned to request to dissolve the preliminary injunction and dismiss the case.

Andrew Albert, a nonvoting board member who opposed the proposal, said the board’s decision signaled that its members did not think New Yorkers were smart enough to tell the difference between “hate speech and political speech and hemorrhoid-related ads.”

“Nobody is forced to read these ads,” Mr. Albert said. “You look away. There are plenty of ads that I find offensive that are not political or hate speech, and I bury myself in a book or a tablet.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: M.T.A. Bans Political Ads on Subways and Buses After a Court Order . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe